Houston will play two tough series this week
A look at the big week ahead for the Astros
Apr 8, 2019, 6:47 am
Photo by Elsa/Getty Images
After stumbling out to a 2-5 start, the Astros rebounded with a strong weekend performance, sweeping the A's in the weekend series to climb back up the AL West standings and get to .500 with a 5-5 record. This week, they'll have a chance to shake up the early, volatile standings even more, but it'll take as good, or better, games to come out ahead.
First, they'll stay at home for a three-game set against the Yankees, who are in a very similar spot. New York started their season 2-4 before sweeping the Orioles in Baltimore over the weekend, improving their record to 5-4 and moving them up to second in the AL East. Not only will the series be big for both teams because it's a potential playoff preview, but two of the three games will have the national spotlight with Monday and Tuesday night's games broadcast on ESPN.
Those two games will be nationally televised for good reason; Monday night we'll see the aces for both teams squaring off, with Justin Verlander on the mound for Houston and Masahiro Tanaka for New York. Then, Tuesday night we'll see Gerrit Cole go up against 24-year-old Jonathan Loaisiga. Verlander will look to improve to 2-0 on the season and rebound from his last start, a four-run four-inning outing in Arlington that luckily ended in a no-decision. Cole meanwhile will also look to improve his early-season numbers' he sits at 0-2 with a 3.00 ERA, getting little offense to back him in his two starts where he's gone six innings each and a combined 19 strikeouts.
Pitching matchups aside, these two offenses had great weekends and could easily give the pitching staffs grief with the Astros scoring 18 runs over their three-game set with Oakland and the Yankees exploding for 29 runs against Baltimore in their three games, 15 of those coming in their huge blowout on Sunday. One upside for the Astros is that the Yankees will be without Giancarlo Stanton who sits on the 10-day injured list with a bicep strain. That hasn't slowed them down at all, though, with Aaron Judge's power leading a potent lineup with great hitters like newly-signed DJ LeMahieu and young Gleyber Torres. As far as Houston's lineup, as mentioned they had a strong weekend with their top guys like George Springer, Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, and Carlos Correa all coming through with some consistency and big hits.
It could be even more intriguing if the Astros could get some help from the Royals earlier in the week, but regardless, after Houston wraps up the series at home with the Yankees they'll travel to Seattle to take on the first-place Mariners who have gotten out to a red-hot start. After sweeping the two-game Japan opening series with the A's, the Mariners have since taken three out of four with the defending champion Red Sox and two out of three against the White Sox. At 9-2 with a couple of extra games under their belt compared to other teams, the Mariners sit atop the league, 3.5 games ahead of Houston.
Seattle has been winning games by brute force, working their way up to a +29 run differential on the early season after taking advantage of opposing pitches in multiple games. This will set up an intriguing start to the series on Friday night when we see Wade Miley on the mound, a pitcher who typically lives on getting outs in the field on weak contact. Saturday night we'll see Brad Peacock go up against Felix Hernandez, then Sunday it'll be Justin Verlander versus Marco Gonzalez to wrap up the series.
So, with a potential ALCS-level matchup to start the week, then trying to overthrow the current AL West division leader on the road over the weekend, the Astros have a big week ahead of them. Hopefully, they can use the momentum they created in the sweep against the A's this weekend because they'll need strong offense and strong pitching to come out of the week with a winning record. Hopefully, if they can manage that winning record, they may just end the week on top of the division standings.
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Through 20 games, the Houston Astros have managed just six wins and are in last place in the AL West.
Their pitching staff trails only Colorado with a 5.24 ERA and big-money new closer Josh Hader has given up the same number of earned runs in 10 games as he did in 61 last year.
Despite this, these veteran Astros, who have reached the AL Championship Series seven consecutive times, have no doubt they’ll turn things around.
“If there’s a team that can do it, it’s this team,” shortstop Jeremy Peña said.
First-year manager Joe Espada, who was hired in January to replace the retired Dusty Baker, discussed his team’s early struggles.
“It’s not ideal,” he said. “It’s not what we expected, to come out of the shoot playing this type of baseball. But you know what, this is where we’re at and we’ve got to pick it up and play better. That’s just the bottom line.”
Many of Houston’s problems have stemmed from a poor performance by a rotation that has been decimated by injuries. Ace Justin Verlander and fellow starter José Urquidy haven’t pitched this season because of injuries and lefty Framber Valdez made just two starts before landing on the injured list with a sore elbow.
Ronel Blanco, who threw a no-hitter in his season debut April 1, has pitched well and is 2-0 with a 0.86 ERA in three starts this season. Cristian Javier is also off to a good start, going 2-0 with a 1.54 ERA in four starts, but the team has won just two games not started by those two pitchers.
However, Espada wouldn’t blame the rotation for Houston’s current position.
“It’s been a little bit of a roller coaster how we've played overall,” he said. “One day we get good starting pitching, some days we don’t. The middle relief has been better and sometimes it hasn’t been. So, we’ve just got to put it all together and then play more as a team. And once we start doing that, we’ll be in good shape.”
The good news for the Astros is that Verlander will make his season debut Friday night when they open a series at Washington and Valdez should return soon after him.
“Framber and Justin have been a great part of our success in the last few years,” second baseman Jose Altuve said. “So, it’s always good to have those two guys back helping the team. We trust them and I think it’s going to be good.”
Hader signed a five-year, $95 million contract this offseason to give the Astros a shutdown 7-8-9 combination at the back end of their bullpen with Bryan Abreu and Ryan Pressly. But the five-time All-Star is off to a bumpy start.
He allowed four runs in the ninth inning of a 6-1 loss to the Braves on Monday night and has yielded eight earned runs this season after giving up the same number in 56 1/3 innings for San Diego last year.
He was much better Wednesday when he struck out the side in the ninth before the Astros fell to Atlanta in 10 innings for their third straight loss.
Houston’s offense, led by Altuve, Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker, ranks third in the majors with a .268 batting average and is tied for third with 24 homers this season. But the Astros have struggled with runners in scoring position and often failed to get a big hit in close games.
While many of Houston’s hitters have thrived this season, one notable exception is first baseman José Abreu. The 37-year-old, who is in the second year of a three-year, $58.5 million contract, is hitting 0.78 with just one extra-base hit in 16 games, raising questions about why he remains in the lineup every day.
To make matters worse, his error on a routine ground ball in the eighth inning Wednesday helped the Braves tie the game before they won in extra innings.
Espada brushed off criticism of Abreu and said he knows the 2020 AL MVP can break out of his early slump.
“Because (of) history,” Espada said. “The back of his baseball card. He can do it.”
Though things haven’t gone well for the Astros so far, everyone insists there’s no panic in this team which won its second World Series in 2022.
Altuve added that he doesn’t have to say anything to his teammates during this tough time.
“I think they’ve played enough baseball to know how to control themselves and how to come back to the plan we have, which is winning games,” he said.
The clubhouse was quiet and somber Wednesday after the Astros suffered their third series sweep of the season and second at home. While not panicking about the slow start, this team, which has won at least 90 games in each of the last three seasons, is certainly not happy with its record.
“We need to do everything better,” third baseman Alex Bregman said. “I feel like we’re in a lot of games, but we just haven’t found a way to win them. And good teams find a way to win games. So we need to find a way to win games.”